FCC adds spectrum to Wi-Fi—but you likely need a new router to use it

Even latest-gen 802.11ac routers might be left behind. Here's why.

The Federal Communications Commission last week said it will add 195MHz of spectrum to Wi-Fi's 5GHz band. This move is designed to relieve congestion in Wi-Fi networks, particularly in areas of widespread simultaneous usage like airports and sports stadiums. It could help your home network too, but not right away—routers available in stores today may not be able to use the new spectrum at all.

Finding out definitively whether today's routers will support the new spectrum is difficult, partly because the FCC still has to issue specific rules governing its use. We've hit up router vendors and other industry people to find out whether software updates might let current routers access the new spectrum. While the results were a bit muddled, it seems safe to say no one is guaranteeing today's routers will get the benefit of the new 195MHz. Even the latest routers supporting the ultra-modern 802.11ac standard may be left behind.

Cisco refused to comment at all, telling us only "Cisco has not made any announcements about this so cannot discuss at this time." Buffalo told us "the chip vendors will need to work on it" and that "they will at least to have to make changes to the hardware driver. ... The magnitude of that change will determine if Buffalo is able to use the same hardware."

The most extensive response we got from a router vendor was from D-Link, whose associate VP of Product Development Will Brown provided us with this statement:

After discussion with our current chip vendors, we understand that the industry is lobbying to move this licensed spectrum to unlicensed spectrum. In order to take advantage of this spectrum, the chip vendors are reporting that updated chipsets will be required if approved. Our product development philosophy is to provide our customers with the best value. Regardless, if we can achieve this additional feature by a firmware [update] we would commit to providing it as long as it doesn't have detrimental effects on the devices' current features and performance.

As this new feature (spectrum) is released there are a number of go-to-market items that we are evaluating including competitive requirements, cost of implementation, education to our customers, and standards compliance.

Given that Buffalo and D-Link said it may ultimately come down to chip vendors, we checked with Broadcom, Marvell, and Qualcomm Atheros to see what they have to say. So far, we've received a response from Qualcomm, which said "It is true that none of the existing routers can take advantage of the potential additional channels the FCC is planning to un-license. The reason for that is current dual-band routers and chipsets that are in them are designed to support already unlicensed spectrum. The new proposed 5GHz channels are in the higher 5GHz band so that new chips support to support this will be required."

While current Qualcomm chips don't support the additional (or newly "unlicensed") spectrum, a revised version of the chips that will support it is in the works. "Qualcomm Atheros 11ac Wi-Fi products are designed to support these new additional channels of the 5GHz spectrum and will be ready when the FCC's rulemaking process will be kicked off," the company said.

Broadcom has weighed in a little more optimistically, saying "There is a possibility that our existing 11ac solutions could take advantage of the new spectrum. To determine this we need to wait for the FCC to release their detailed technical rules for operation at these new frequencies. We expect this to happen towards the end of February at which point we will have more clarity on the question."

Sharing spectrum isn't easy

One complication in making chips and routers support the new spectrum is that, rather than being devoted exclusively to Wi-Fi, the 195MHz may be shared with federal agencies.

The FCC's announcement noted that the 195MHz at hand is used today "by both federal and non-federal users." Thus, "the effort will require significant collaboration with other federal agencies." For example, the 5.850-5.925GHz band is allocated to the government's dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) project.

If the spectrum is shared in a similar manner as in the TV White Spaces project, this would require routers to register their geographic locations with a database, which would then return a list of authorized channels they may use.

The FCC has not specified the rules for how the spectrum will be shared. One option is DFS [dynamic frequency selection], already a technology used in 5GHz but one that is not working as well as expected.

Most current devices support DFS. The other option is to add a database like the one for TVWS [TV White Spaces]. There is a manual database today that supports part of this band. Because this is a manual process the sharing is managed through the configuration interfaces in the devices. None of the current devices support a database API so at a minimum they would need a firmware update. However, even if they support the spectrum and add a database API, the FCC is likely to require recertification before they are permitted to use the band. This last step probably means that only new devices will access the band.

While routers would have to communicate with spectrum sharing databases, end-user devices (like laptops, phones, and tablets) would also need to support the right frequencies and the latest standards. Devices like laptops will need new chips as well, Qualcomm told us.

Wi-Fi Alliance Technical Director Greg Ennis speculated some router manufacturers might have built current devices to support the new spectrum, since these particular bands have been proposed for Wi-Fi usage in the past. Even then, how the FCC sets rules governing the spectrum's use will be important. "Until the FCC really goes through their process of determining exactly what the rules are going to be for operating in these bands, it won't be clear how this is going to play out. It may involve rules that require new implementations," Ennis said.

More Wi-Fi spectrum is a good thing, no matter when it happens

This isn't to say that the FCC's move isn't meaningful, or that you should even hold off on buying a router (there are plenty of good ones out there already). The point is that adding spectrum to Wi-Fi is more of a long-term play to ensure we don't outgrow our current allotment.

Wi-Fi's 5GHz band currently stretches from 5.150 to 5.825, with a gap in the middle, Ennis told Ars in a phone interview. The FCC plan would add two new bands, ultimately giving Wi-Fi a contiguous block from 5.150 to 5.925. This will be particularly useful to devices using 802.11ac as opposed to the last-generation 802.11n standard. 802.11ac can use channels of up to 160MHz wide, and having a larger contiguous band as proposed by the FCC would allow "more and wider channels (and thus more capacity)," wireless engineer Steven Crowley wrote on his blog.

"This will have a big impact on the devices that support 802.11ac," Stanforth told Ars. "Today they can only get one max size channel; with the new allocation they should be able to get four, which is a big deal."

A statement from FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai notes that 802.11ac "requires large, contiguous swaths of spectrum for high-speed, high-capacity data transfers... The propagation of 5GHz spectrum is relatively short, which minimizes interference and makes 5GHz perfect for common unlicensed applications."

The 195MHz would be the biggest Wi-Fi spectrum expansion in the 5GHz band since 2003, when it was expanded from 300MHz to 555MHz, Crowley wrote.

The FCC's next step is to issue a notice of proposed rule-making to gather comments on the spectrum changes. How long it will take to actually clear the spectrum for Wi-Fi use isn't known, although Ennis said, "I would certainly hope it happens in 2013." (UPDATE: It will take longer than that. The National Telecommunications & Information Administration has said it won't finalize its recommendations to the FCC until December 2014.)

The FCC said the extra spectrum will "relieve congested Wi-Fi networks at major hubs like convention centers and airports" and "help in homes as tablets and smartphones proliferate and video use rises."

Those wider channels will be great for video applications, Ennis said.

Although it will mostly be new devices actually using the new spectrum, Ennis said all Wi-Fi users will ultimately benefit, if only indirectly. Even people stuck on the crowded 2.4GHz band might see congestion relieved as their neighbors move on to more attractive spectrum.

"Adding spectrum ends up helping everybody, including the devices that are currently operating on the 2.4GHz band, because by expanding the spectrum everybody is using that ends up spreading users over a wider total bandwidth," Ennis said.

Promoted Comments

Why does the article solely focus on routers? If D-Link does manage to push out a firmware update to allow new channels, it doesn't help unless your wireless devices also get updates to use those frequencies.

So it seems that the router vendors 1.) Haven't had a whole lot of time to corporately digest the news or 2.) Figure out if / when / how to take advantage of it. Not completely surprising, given how un-agile most corps are.

If spectrum was allocated public-first, this would be less of an issue, but since it's too late for that, I welcome any efforts by the FCC to return this resource to the public. The lack of unlicensed spectrum in North America is a problem; the public needs it more than any forgotten defense project.

You need to be able to access that spectrum. Most router companies don't even make the RF front-end that accesses that spectrum, so they probably don't even know whether their device could access that spectrum, let alone if it performs well. If the RF front-end ASIC they are using can't cleanly tune that spectrum, they can't use it. If their particular stack-up of PCB/antenna attenuate that band too much, they can't use it.

It isn't as simple as saying: the gov't says you may go use it, you tweak a bit, and blam - you are there. It would be nice if that were true, but often real systems make trade offs, aren't calibrated for out-of-band operation, etc. So it is probably only going to be useful for future devices, and useless for current generation devices which will either not be capable of functioning, or would require firmware work to make it possible to access - and therefore functionally inert.

Cacophony and digital hash. Pretty soon we won't need SETI to find aliens. They'll come to us and tell us to shut off our billions of little noisy radios. It used to be TV and radio station signals broadcasting our presence to our corner of the galaxy. Now it will be Facebook and Twitter. Yuck. Hope they are tolerant as opposed to the bad "ETs" on Falling Skies! Sooner or later Radio Astronomy is going to have to leave the planet because of all our digital trash and hash.

I appluad D-Link for taking the time to formulate a response - something I consider part and parcel of good customer service. I detest that companies tend to take the stand of "sorry, we just can't say" on almost every front until an army of lawyers, marketeers, and PR folk have had a chance to formulate what words, font, and colors are best used to proffer any news to the public. Color me annoyed.

Actually, Globalstar wants to allow parts of its satellite spectrum that sits above the 2.4GHz ISM band to be allowed for use as terrestrial WiFi. The problem is that they want exclusive use of the new channel to build a wifi network, and then later use it for terrestrial LTE. No one likes this idea except for them though (you wouldn't be able to use that channel on your wifi router).

IMO, the issue isn't more spectrum for 2.4GHz, its getting more devices to the 5GHz, especially after this expansion takes place. Having 750MHz of 5GHz unlicensed would be plenty to avoid interference with nearby networks, as well as provide large channels for fast data transfers.

If we want to add more unlicensed spectrum, I'm still suggesting the 90MHz available in the 1.3GHz band. Better for large in-building networks. Might not be a speed demon, but would be great for places that don't need ultrafast speeds but good coverage.

2.4 GHz is so ridiculously overcrowded. There's no fixing that without moving some of the existing services away. Gradually of course. Moving the next wifi standard is a step in the right direction.

So how about the 2.3 or 2.5 Ghz spectrum then? All of this fancy 5Ghz spectrum stuff is nice, but it doesn't help the fact that it sucks at going through walls. For the big open air venues talked about in the article this isn't a problem, but for people who have their wireless router in the basement because that's where the cable drop is the 5Ghz spectrum is not so useful.

Cacophony and digital hash. Pretty soon we won't need SETI to find aliens. They'll come to us and tell us to shut off our billions of little noisy radios. It used to be TV and radio station signals broadcasting our presence to our corner of the galaxy. Now it will be Facebook and Twitter. Yuck. Hope they are tolerant as opposed to the bad "ETs" on Falling Skies! Sooner or later Radio Astronomy is going to have to leave the planet because of all our digital trash and hash.

Ham radio guy.

Consumer transmitters (wifi, cell phones) are peanuts compared to commercial radio and TV, and that's peanuts compared to military radar.

If spectrum was allocated public-first, this would be less of an issue, but since it's too late for that, I welcome any efforts by the FCC to return this resource to the public. The lack of unlicensed spectrum in North America is a problem; the public needs it more than any forgotten defense project.

It will be a bit of a research project, but the Predator drone control channel is near that band. No 5.8G wifi gear is allowed at Creech.

2.4 GHz is so ridiculously overcrowded. There's no fixing that without moving some of the existing services away. Gradually of course. Moving the next wifi standard is a step in the right direction.

So how about the 2.3 or 2.5 Ghz spectrum then? All of this fancy 5Ghz spectrum stuff is nice, but it doesn't help the fact that it sucks at going through walls. For the big open air venues talked about in the article this isn't a problem, but for people who have their wireless router in the basement because that's where the cable drop is the 5Ghz spectrum is not so useful.

Then use Cat5e as a back bone and then add 5ghz AP's for the rooms you need it in. Also fixed position items like TV, Media Center, Xbox. should be wired.Mobile devices, eg laptop, tablet, mobile phone can use the WiFi, freeing up the bandwidth.

Why does the article solely focus on routers? If D-Link does manage to push out a firmware update to allow new channels, it doesn't help unless your wireless devices also get updates to use those frequencies.

2.4 GHz is so ridiculously overcrowded. There's no fixing that without moving some of the existing services away. Gradually of course. Moving the next wifi standard is a step in the right direction.

So how about the 2.3 or 2.5 Ghz spectrum then? All of this fancy 5Ghz spectrum stuff is nice, but it doesn't help the fact that it sucks at going through walls. For the big open air venues talked about in the article this isn't a problem, but for people who have their wireless router in the basement because that's where the cable drop is the 5Ghz spectrum is not so useful.

Just because your cable drop comes in the basement, that's not a requirement for your router or your router's antennas to be down there. My router had Type-N connectors for the antennas, so I ordered some cable and relocated the antennas away from the corner of the basement. If my router didn't have those, then I could have relocated the router instead with some Cat5 or coax depending on the setup.

This doesn't solve the elephant in the room that is the fact that the majority of devices shipping right now are still lacking 5 GHz radios. Apart from desktop/laptops and the last 2 generations of iPad, pretty much every other device out there will only do 2.4 GHz. Unless this situation changes soon there is very little advantage to increasing the 5 GHz band, as it is not the one that's overcrowded to begin with!

This doesn't solve the elephant in the room that is the fact that the majority of devices shipping right now are still lacking 5 GHz radios. Apart from desktop/laptops and the last 2 generations of iPad, pretty much every other device out there will only do 2.4 GHz. Unless this situation changes soon there is very little advantage to increasing the 5 GHz band, as it is not the one that's overcrowded to begin with!

Most Galaxy S2 variants, Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note I and II, Nexus 4/Optimus G, and iPhone 5 also do 5 GHz. There's a bunch of other Android devices that also do 5 GHz. It's not as barrent a landscape as you think.

This doesn't solve the elephant in the room that is the fact that the majority of devices shipping right now are still lacking 5 GHz radios. Apart from desktop/laptops and the last 2 generations of iPad, pretty much every other device out there will only do 2.4 GHz. Unless this situation changes soon there is very little advantage to increasing the 5 GHz band, as it is not the one that's overcrowded to begin with!

Honestly I suspect that getting 5ghz more widespread is the reason why the parts of ac that would be beneficial at 2.4ghz weren't applied to it. 802.11ac is a 5ghz only standard; any device that wants to be buzzword compliant with the most recent wifi will have to include 5ghz support. I suspect that within a year or two this will result in most devices having 5ghz support.

I'm not a wifi guru but shouldn't it be easier to implement a radio that detects if someone else is using the spectrum and change the channel?

Is 195mhz really worth having your wifi sending your gps coordinates to a third party?

Do the servers that you contact store the requests they get and how long do they store them?

So many questions, so little bandwith ;-)

Well Google and some other companies already know pretty much where your AP is, that's how wifi geolocation works on cell phones. Still, I agree with you. If it's government controlled who knows what they'd use the location data for.

2.4 GHz is so ridiculously overcrowded. There's no fixing that without moving some of the existing services away. Gradually of course. Moving the next wifi standard is a step in the right direction.

So how about the 2.3 or 2.5 Ghz spectrum then? All of this fancy 5Ghz spectrum stuff is nice, but it doesn't help the fact that it sucks at going through walls. For the big open air venues talked about in the article this isn't a problem, but for people who have their wireless router in the basement because that's where the cable drop is the 5Ghz spectrum is not so useful.

Can't do that because there are existing devices and existing users in those bands. Look at this:

I'm not a wifi guru but shouldn't it be easier to implement a radio that detects if someone else is using the spectrum and change the channel?

Is 195mhz really worth having your wifi sending your gps coordinates to a third party?

Do the servers that you contact store the requests they get and how long do they store them?

So many questions, so little bandwith ;-)

Well Google and some other companies already know pretty much where your AP is, that's how wifi geolocation works on cell phones. Still, I agree with you. If it's government controlled who knows what they'd use the location data for.

I don't live in the USA though so not an issue for me anyway.

Yep that is creepy as all hell, isn't it? Seeing "enabling wifi will improve location services" error pop up on my phone every couple of days is a reminder of our eroding digital privacies. Besides, WTF is up with using nearby SSIDs on a mobile device which already has cell tower triangulation and, oh I don't know, a GPS receiver? Weird.

My home wifi is not in their database. I checked. There's a reason for that. I use 802.11a.

Why does the article solely focus on routers? If D-Link does manage to push out a firmware update to allow new channels, it doesn't help unless your wireless devices also get updates to use those frequencies.

This is good for Wi-Fi: up to 50% increase (depending how the bands are defined: reports in the press cite a 35% increase so we may be a little optimistic here) in channels in the 5GHz band that is increasingly important, as many consumer Wi-Fi devices are now becoming dual-band. The forthcoming 802.11ac protocol supports wider channels, 80 and 160MHz, and the new rules should allow more of these wide channels to be used in the 5GHz band, giving Gigabit+ throughput.

We need to see what protocols will be required for spectrum sharing, but it is likely that existing equipment will not be field-upgradeable to support the new channels. And it will be a while before the rules are finalized, equipment is re-designed, re-certified and available on the market, perhaps into 2014. But this is a very encouraging announcement for Wi-Fi.

2.4 GHz is so ridiculously overcrowded. There's no fixing that without moving some of the existing services away. Gradually of course. Moving the next wifi standard is a step in the right direction.

So how about the 2.3 or 2.5 Ghz spectrum then? All of this fancy 5Ghz spectrum stuff is nice, but it doesn't help the fact that it sucks at going through walls. For the big open air venues talked about in the article this isn't a problem, but for people who have their wireless router in the basement because that's where the cable drop is the 5Ghz spectrum is not so useful.

Can't do that because there are existing devices and existing users in those bands. Look at this:

Crowded. Some of it is government used. Some of it is satellites. Moving them would be hard.

It's hilarious that most microwave ovens are right there around 2.45 GHz. Can you say broadband jamming device?

That's more or less by design. The reason 2.4ghz is an unlicensed block is that it's a peak frequency for being absorbed by water; as a result the moisture in the air makes it useless for any long range services. This makes it ideal for heating most types of food. And as long as they're tolerant of interference anything else is allowed to use the band provided it abides by certain broadcast power limits.

The other major bands used for unlicensed communications services are all also set aside because something absorbs RF at that energy efficiently. ex A large O2 absorption peak is present at 61ghz; inside of the 7ghz wide block 802.11ad operates on.

The reason 2.4ghz is an unlicensed block is that it's a peak frequency for being absorbed by water; as a result the moisture in the air makes it useless for any long range services.

Humm. Tell that to my customers using 5-10 mile links

It just needs to be used properly, and yes the absorption (resonance) with water & 2.4GHz is *exactly* why it's an unlicensed band. The same with 900MHz and the original 5.8GHz areas.

Due to the characteristics of the adjacent areas, we'll never see the expansion of the 2.4GHz ISM area in the same way that 5GHz is being expanded. Basically, they're low enough in frequency that people with big checkbooks are willing to write big checks to have them.

5GHz doesn't have that situation, plus the higher free space attenuation means that even when there are licensed or primary band users, the ranges are shorter - thus, more re-use.

As a WISP, I welcome 195MHz of >5GHz spectrum. It'll be useful! It's not some kind of silver bullet for huge bandwidth or huge range, but it'll still be very useful. I just hope the rules aren't overly restrictive like TVWS are. Speaking of TVWS, if they'd just fix the spectral mask restrictions so that affordable devices could be engineered....

Why does the article solely focus on routers? If D-Link does manage to push out a firmware update to allow new channels, it doesn't help unless your wireless devices also get updates to use those frequencies.

That channel list indicates that all of the spectrum being added by the FCC is legal to use for wifi in some parts of the world now. With the increased focus on global chips over multiple regional designs most hardware should only need a firmware update to be able to support them. Good news for those of us using OSS firmware on our routers anyway.

Then use Cat5e as a back bone and then add 5ghz AP's for the rooms you need it in. Also fixed position items like TV, Media Center, Xbox. should be wired.Mobile devices, eg laptop, tablet, mobile phone can use the WiFi, freeing up the bandwidth.

If I could run ethernet I certainly wouldn't be putting up with the wireless connection.